The Veterans Affairs Department has figured out
how to fix a backlog of health care applications that dates back at
least four years: Enforce a law requiring veterans to furnish the
necessary paperwork, or the applications will be closed.

By law, VA must notify applicants with incomplete
applications, and if the veteran receives the notice but does not
provide the information, the department closes the request.

In the past, the VA's Health Eligibility Center
has not tracked the status or timing of applications, resulting in an
applications backlog that includes the applications of 545,000 living
veterans and 245,000 deceased veterans.

The VA inspector general in September 2015 found
extensive problems with the VA's health applications, including evidence
that VA employees lost 10,000 applications and that more than 245,000
veterans on the pending list actually were deceased.

In addition to sending letters to veterans on the
pending list, the department plans to provide the names of veterans who
have applied to VA medical centers across the country for VA staff to
call them.

“They are using the same address information
they’ve had for years that they've acknowledged has bad addresses” said
Scott Davis, a VA whistleblower.

Excerpted from Military Times: Patricia Kime / March 8, 2016

Editorial comment – What this means is
that the VA, which has not been able to get a grasp on its health care
enrollee’s applications for years, will now enforce an archaic law that
requires them to contact the enrollees, and if they do not respond, the
VA will trash their applications.The VA is doing this even though it knows that the contact
information for many of these veterans is erroneous.